- Joined
- Apr 6, 2015
- Messages
- 6,290
- Location
- NJ
Definitely agree about this place being like crack...though in my telling I feel like I just mainlined heroin posting here. Probably comes as no shock to some of you folks. A pity more people don't post here though. This place has always been a blast and I can't imagine anymore relying solely on media news reports or even the supposed critical analysis pieces from certain hack journalists who should and do know better.
I don't know if Nicky was cheated (2007 was definitely a cheating) so much as some of it was the natural outgrowth of career decisions he made. But he was under-appreciated to no end. I have a lot of historical topics on this forum I've been meaning to start and this is one of them as the more I read/learn about that 2006 season, the more I feel that it has never been put into a proper perspective. Yes the information is out there, but it's been pushed off to the back of the room in a closet. I've come a long way around on that title over the years (in large part thanks to you and this forum) because I mistakenly thought less of it because I was not looking at all of the relevant information. And there's still new stuff I'm learning about it. Something new I just found out last night was that HRC bosses were asked if the 990cc V5 that was in Nicky's bike was being used as a rolling test bed for essential internal components for the 800cc V4 and they denied this was the case before turning around and admitting it was true.
I think this is sort of going to be the eternal struggle with Nicky's legacy as a grand prix motorcycle racer. He didn't get to pick when he won his title, and it just happened to come at not the best of times because of Rossi's hegemony over the premier class up to that point, and then he got sandwiched on the other side of things by Stoner's performance the following year on the Ducati 800. The retelling of this period by those with regrettably more influence than this forum ever will have, will always focus first on Rossi losing the title at Valencia rather than considering Nicky rode a nearly perfect season and had already understood by 2006 that you do not win titles based solely on wins, but by looking at the whole of the championship rather than each race as a separate piece. I believe he lost a title in 1999 or thereabouts in one of the AMA series in spite of winning something like 7 out of 10 races because his challenger scored more points where he needed to. Only the great riders can truly look at the championship in that kind of a fashion...and while they may get grief for not winning as much as the outside world thinks they should, if they are raising the title at the end of the season instead of the then 5-time premier class champion, I'd say they did the absolute right thing. After all, that was the biggest difference between Wayne Rainey and Kevin Schwantz. Kevin wasn't able to look at the championship in those terms till 1993 whereas Wayne had that mentality always. And the other thing is, outside of Donington where he made an error, Nicky made zero mistakes in 2006. He finished in the top 5 in 14 out of 17 rounds, Brno he finished 7th and Estoril as we all know Pedrosa took him out. Think about how consistently good you had to be to finish in the top 5 in 14 out of 17 rounds. That's what great riders do.
